12 replies to this topic

[Moonlightelf]

...le art. *grins*

Now that I'm back again with my lovely set of art equipment, it would be a time for a brand new topic.

Sprites:




Fail Sprites:


Other Sprites:

From left to right: Streaked Amphitere (don't know what happened to the topic though), Seatrench adults and Seatrench hatchlings.

Artsy:


Artsy W.I.P.:




Enjoy.

Edited by Moonlightelf, 20 December 2011 - 09:45 AM.

[Ego]

They're pretty good, especially if you've only just picked up spriting. If you don't mind, I'll toss out some crits for improvement!

The FE sprite: Well, it's...nice. My god, make the background transparent or extremely low saturation or something. It's making the sprite hard to view. Even without the background, a couple notes. If this is meant to be a genuine, true Fire Emblem style sprite, the outline needs to change a bit. Outlines of FE sprites are ALWAYS #282828. Other than that, there are simply a huge amount of very saturated colors. Too much saturation can burn the eyes a bit and, even worse, obscure the details of a piece.

The dragons: You nailed it - too much detail. That's one of the things that makes spriting an art, you need to be able to communicate detail without actually spriting it. The size boost in the female featherback helps a bit, but it's probably the wings and tail that try too hard there.

You have a good grip on lines. It's a good thing to know, lines aren't easy for me anymore. What is less great is shading and palette selection.
For shading, one thing to do right away is pick a lightsource. Your pieces here don't really have one. Pick where the light is coming from, and try to visualize how the shades fall on the dragons. You don't use much of the core pixel techniques, the most prominent of which are anti-aliasing(AA) and dithering. I wouldn't suggest dithering here, it can complicate the image, but AA is important. AA is a means of smoothing lines and keeping them from appearing too stark on an image. The thing you seem to be doing with shading here is simply defining more detail on the sprite, and it makes it look a bit messy at times.
<- not my image, but a great little tutorial from PixelJoint's tutorial thread.
The other thing that I'd work on would be the palettes. First, you use a LOT of colors. Most of the dragons, you don't need five shades of each color on a sprite of this size. That's because, as it stands, each thing just looks like one single color. Something that could definitely help with that as well would be adding more contrast, something there is little of, especially in the whites. Something else I'd recommend experimenting with is hue shifting. Hue shifting produces more visual interest I think, but it's something you need to be careful with, but I'd say try it out.
Here's a couple more of PixelJoint's tutorials:


Probably the best advice I can give if you really want to improve a lot would be to join a dedicated spriting site. There's The Spriter's Resource Community, but at least the PTers taking refuge there like to bite the head off of newcomers. The PixelJoint community is much more open to newbies, and there's a lot of really great guys there. I'd also recommend checking out how the masters do it at Pixelation(www.wayofthepixel.net), they're probably the best around.

Hope this helps, I'd love to see more! Always nice to have more spriters around.

EDIT: Gonna hijack your thread now. That Seatrench adult lineart was really speaking to me, so I spent an hour or so filling it in. Decided to go all bio-luminescent with the fins and stuff, I like how it turned out. If you're wondering how to implement some of those tutorial pieces, I have AA pretty obvious in the top left(the critter's back) on the curve, dithering all over but especially noticeable on the belly, and hue shifting going on from a cyan to a purple on the body as well as from a yellow to a slightly more reddish brown on the fins, though it's still quite yellow-y. There're 10 colors+transparency.

EDIT2: For great completeness:

Some crazy dithering on the left. I'll stop stealing your thread now.

Edited by Ego, 07 November 2011 - 05:39 PM.

[Linkmaster30000]

I rather enjoyed the FE sprite, mostly because I've done some FE spriting myself (for KG Emblem as well as for an unfinished AotL2 chapter).

[Moonlightelf]

Ego: *Chuckles at hijacking* Don't worry, you can always do that to my thread.
About the FE sprite. Did the small set's background transparent as you adviced. Though I never really intend to make things true to style. Thus I made the outlines as they are.
Indeed nailed it on there being too much detail. I acknowledged it quite soonish when getting critique waaaaaaay too late. Which practically made me cease with spriting really. But planning to try again and see where it leads.
Palettes and picking colors... I have acknowledged that it is my biggest weakness when it comes to spriting. You see, none of the colors really "hurt" my eyes, since I've worked with colors for so long time with coloring pencils. So most likely I would need palette of colors not to be used. Something to compare to I'd say.
But I try my best to improve. And at some point reach my dreams.


Jade the Necromancer: Thankiees. Really enjoying to do it, and more will come.


And now we has some more art. I bet you guys likey to see these.





Once again, enjoy.

Edited by Moonlightelf, 08 November 2011 - 09:31 AM.

[Linkmaster30000]

My favorite is the golden fox-like creature (but, as always, they're all good).

[Albert Wesker]

Is it just me, or does the golden fox kinda remind me of Ninetails?

[Moonlightelf]

LM30K: Thanks
Wesker: Wouldn't be a first time I kinda get reminded from Ninetales too while looking at it.

Moar artz

Edited by Moonlightelf, 20 December 2011 - 09:14 AM.

[Moonlightelf]

Well what we have here today? Some fanart sort of thing WIP.

Edited by Moonlightelf, 20 December 2011 - 09:15 AM.

[Linkmaster30000]

As much as I despise that character, you did an amazing job with drawing her.

[Moonlightelf]

And I think I did good job with coloring her too, though I despise the colorscheme:


But that aside, to other things.
We have a lovely character here. You might remember her lineart from my old thread.



Aside this, I have studied spriting a bit more, which has resulted into following little fellow.
It's saying "Squeek" at you.
And here is also another little sprite, though it is still at stage of W.I.P....
Also had an honor to sprite some ornaments for Dragon Cave's christmas event.

Enjoy.

Edited by Moonlightelf, 20 December 2011 - 09:34 AM.

[Linkmaster30000]

I enjoy the textures of that first sprite. And the second one with the wings looks pretty sweet - looking forward to the finished product!

[Moonlightelf]

O boy, few broken images.

 

Can't say that I've been active exactly, but lets put a stop on waiting and toss some art over here.

Shame on you Moon, shame on you.

 

I hope these two will... well... make up for all the waiting while I get more art done.

[Linkmaster30000]

Awesome as always, Moonie! I especially like the bird.